


Field of Mars

by Hope



Series: Werewolf 'verse (SPN, AU) [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Animal Transformation, Crack Fic, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-29
Updated: 2006-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to On the banks of the Tiber.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Field of Mars

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve done a ‘DVD commentary’ for this fic, which you can find [here](http://angstslashhope.livejournal.com/1206224.html?#cutid1).

*

The journal's not new, but it's new_er_, vinyl instead of leather, cracked through years of use when he opens it to write on a new page, immediately below today's date: _Found the Chevy today._

John's trained himself to be cryptic, to use the information he records as mere triggers for a wealth of knowledge and memories. It's been a long time since he's written for a diary, and old habits die hard.

_Found the Chevy today._

About a third-way through this sheaf of papers, filled to this point with a schizophrenic's collage of clippings, scribbles, sketches; fistfuls more of them filling several cases stashed in the trunk. A page with the weight of clear, blank paper behind it. The date. A single sentence, years of searching behind it. _Found the Chevy today._

It's probably not the wisest thing to do at this point, but he didn't get where he is today by rushing into things, crashing forward and hacking at the branches in his path with a machete. That was only for the first year or two. Until he learnt to duck and weave, to know when to rest, to wait for daylight. That's what led him here. So John drinks til the hotel room becomes a soft, warm smear around him, culminating the nausea that'd surged up when he first caught sight of the rusted metal til he throws up in the room's tiny wastepaper basket and passes out on top of the single's coverlet.

*

Car's still there the next day, though it doesn't feel like it. Doesn't feel like the _next day_, with the single sentence in the journal re-cycling through and through again, like the instant he made it to the bottom of the short valley and saw the metal incongruous amongst the greenery it tripped a burr into the spinning of time's record. He's torn between getting away from it, pushing ahead; and not leaving in case it vanishes the second his back turns.

Always easier to think like you're already in the future; in his head he records in the journal the movement as he eases forward through the scrub, pulls leafy tendrils away from the body of it, gritting his teeth as they easily pull flakes of black paint off with them.

A wave of heat wafts out when he gets the passenger-side door open, heavy with the smell of overcooked leather. Nothing's rotten; it'd been sealed up pretty good, no windows open, but he's sweating already in the Californian summer sun and it's been… It's been a long time. The upholstery's ruined.

And too hot to sit on, though he grasps the inside door handle long enough to sear his palm on the metal while he fumbles with the brittle catch on the glove compartment. It drops open, revealing a battered cigar box, a pistol and a misshapen candy bar. He can see Dean's key ring dangling down from the ignition on the far side of the steering shaft.

John leans back out and breathes deep, then wipes his sleeve over the back window and peers in. There's a crumpled sweater on the floor behind the driver's side, some food wrappers on the seat.

His fingers twist out the combination without even having to think about it, unfamiliar and familiar all at the same time and he swallows hard when he opens up the weapons compartment in the trunk. The shotgun Dean always used to prop it open is still there, and John uses it for such, otherwise not touching yet but scrutinizing the contents. It's been a while, and it was a while before (_before what?_) that he'd last seen it, in all of Dean's systematic, organised clutter. It's far from empty, though. Most of the weapons there are just as familiar as the combination - throwing knives, crossbow, sawn-off -- but there are a few pieces he's never seen before so it's hard to tell if anything's missing. There's a leather satchel that's almost crisp when he touches it, scuffed corners of a laptop revealed when he peels back the flap.

He plugs it in back at the motel room, and it whirs and grunts and clicks as it struggles to start up. A couple hours of charging and it works a little smoother; the screen's display looks like it's been bleached, though, bleeding in white from the edges. Most likely from the heat.

It takes a few more jerky moments and stuttering whirs before it picks up the motel's WiFi, then a text box pops up in the bottom right-hand corner: _You Have 1649 New Messages_. He clicks away and opens a browser window, clicks the history tab. Organizes by date; most recent. _September 2006_. _Hellhounds, Werewolves, and the Germanic Underworld._ The link takes him to an error page.

_Found the Chevy today,_ his own voice whispers in his head, and he can almost feel it tickling his back teeth.

There's only one file in the recent documents, a _list.txt_, and when he clicks on it the computer freezes, hard drive clicking arrhythmically before the screen whites out with a fine stripe of grey dividing it into uneven halves. He slams it shut.

In the evening he opens the journal again, uses a strip of tape to fix the slightly yellowed clipping he'd torn out of the county library's archive to the page opposite yesterday's entry. Under the single sentence he writes today's date.

_LOCAL HUNTER KILLED IN WOLF ATTACK_, he transcribes. There's a photo, smudged from the newsprint ink on soft paper; a man with thick features, grinning above the open collar of his plaid shirt. John shifts his grip on the pen. _JUNE 2007_, he puts in brackets beside it. Leaves a couple of lines.

_Sammy left his laptop behind,_ he writes, _and Dean his car keys._

_The car was dumped._

The hard plastic digs into the callous on the knuckle of his middle finger, thumbnail making a tiny squeaking noise as he scrapes it against the barrel of the pen. The line of ink on the page is like a thread he's pulling out of a tangle, the same frustration, his efforts tightening more than unraveling.

He drops the pen, reaches for his phone.

It goes to voicemail but that's not unexpected; it's rare for any of them _not_ to screen calls. Which was a curse more than a blessing at one point there, though John had to stop paying Dean's monthly fee couple years back in order to afford a roof over his head; the scales almost evenly tipped for a couple drunken nights when it was that or sleep in the car and hear his son's voice, pre-recorded or no, whenever he wanted to.

"Caleb." It chokes up somewhere in his throat, though comes out sounding more like a sigh than anything else, which is somewhat of a relief. John swallows hard before continuing. "It's my boys. I think I found 'em. Could do with some of your jungle skills, maybe some artillery." His heart's pounding, and he needs a drink. He breathes deep a couple times before continuing. "Call me as soon as you can."

It takes a few more days for Caleb to make his way cross-country, and in the meantime John goes up into the forest a little, following the hiking trails. There're camp grounds all over and they're nowhere near deserted in the summer heat, years worth of scattered charcoal dotting the dusted ground of each, clusters of blackened campfire circles.

He moves between them, plotting points on the map in a broad swathe around the solitary **X** that marks the place of the single wolf attack. The only other markings within that portion of the grid are the curved contours of the mountains.

Half a finger-width on the map further in and in the campsites are less used, slightly more overgrown with spring's rush not yet beaten down by footsteps, and the paths a little more treacherous. He's walking into a clearing in through the blades of afternoon light, looking down at the map when he glances up and stops talking.

"_John?_" Caleb's voice cuts through the tinny background noise of his truck's engine. "_You still there, buddy?_"

"Yeah." John works his jaw for a moment, finishes giving the coordinates before snapping the phone shut and stepping forward, carefully, like he's trying not to spook anything.

As if a tree could be spooked.

"It's something, alright," Caleb says when he sees it, and by the light of the huge fire they've built up, hot summer nights be damned, John writes in his journal.

_The tree trunk's all scratched up, real deep. Caleb's here, brought his GPS and satellite phone, for when we go in further._

He thinks, _Found the Chevy today_, the point it all stopped.

Thinks of how Mary used to sit at her dressing table and write in her diaries, whether it'd been a good day or bad.

Thinks of the days, the weeks after Mary died. How it was like opening the journal and pressing it against his open wounds, smearing the gore of his insides across the blank pages while the boys slept a few feet away; a single indeterminate, fragile mass.

_My boys,_ he writes, and the words look strange on the page. His breath feels strange in his throat. He can't finish it; can't cross it out, either.

_Found the Chevy last week,_ he writes, _Dumped, not crashed. Abandoned, not jacked._

_Nothing was missing,_ he writes, then strikes it out.

*

They examine the tree closer in the early dawn light, see where it's scarred from friction, not just claw marks. Caleb has a metal detector, and he walks in a slowly expanding spiral. John examines each of the trees bordering the clearing, and Caleb's on a sweep near the centre of the clearing when the detector squeals.

Their camp shovels make quick work of the loam, slower where the earth gets harder, and then John feels the impact of metal against metal and through his wrist and elbow to the top of his spine. It's quick, something striking the blade of the shovel and shifting aside.

The earth's soft against his knees, metal cool against his fingers as he claws them through the damper soil, then combing slower. Bullets. A whole clip's worth, smooth and bright when he rubs his thumb over them, cleaning the dirt off.

Caleb picks one out of John's open hand, examines it closely. He peers at a stamp on the base of it then presses his lips together, shows it to John.

A couple yards further away and they uncover a few short lengths of chain threaded with clods of earth. When John sifts through he finds more broken links, and a little deeper still he pries out flatter, broader loops; cuffs.

"Silver," he says to Caleb, and his lips feel numb despite the fact that sweat's collaring 'round from the back of his neck from the exertion, and then his fingers brush something rougher-textured than metal.

A few more scrapes with the shovel, and there--

"Not human," Caleb says, and John wonders how Caleb knew that he needed to hear it out loud. "Probably deer, maybe… Maybe bobcat?" Bones short and fine, and rotting tatters of skin and pelt still clinging to the skull when John digs it out, fingers hooked through eye sockets.

_It's smart,_ he writes in the journal while Caleb packs up camp, extinguishes the ashes of the campfire. The bullets are warm in the palm of his hand, curled around the edge of the journal. _Otherwise I would've found it by now._ He pauses, but only for a moment; the silver and bones like an accelerant poured onto slow-burning coals, the ignition spurring him onward and open. _Otherwise wouldn't have to be looking at all._

_My boys,_ he writes, and there's a flicker of something in his chest; a flicker like a the tip of a whip, sting and burn and bleed out from the inside, a hot flood. _Mary,_ he writes, almost experimentally, and the feeling he gets at seeing that word on the page isn't much different.

He turns to a fresh page. _Something took them, something smart._ Purpose flows through him like ambrosia, each nerve sparking, tightening. He shuts the journal, stands, hefts his pack. _They didn't leave._

*

The moon's a single silver fingernail indent pressed into the ink-blue sky when they start on their plotted course inward, glimmering cross-hatched amidst the branches above. They hike during the day and camp down in the late summer twilight, Caleb keeping track of progress on the GPS while John watches the forest around them, sliding easily back into the tunnel-vision of tracking; earth, foliage and scent. When the firelight stains his page a burnt orange he traces words out like the contours of the mountain swells they move up through on his paper map, black ballpoint tracing the way toward the black **X**.

They get there on the fourth day. It's been years since, but John's able to pinpoint the exact location from the photo he'd glimpsed in the coroner's report. A fallen branch ramps across the gentle incline the body had been immediately above and beside; low shrubs frothing up where the torn earth had been clearly imprinted with paw marks, high-contrast black and white burned into the back of John's eyelids when he blinks.

Caleb leans against a nearby trunk, one arm crossed over his over-pocketed army-issue utility vest and the other lifting to rub his palm against the stubble that spikes the back of his skull. He watches as John stalks out the circumference of the space they've identified.

He's frowning, but then so's John, tension around his mouth familiar like the sturdy support of a leather boot encasing his ankle on a days-long slog.

"You read the coroner's report," Caleb says, and John grunts acknowledgement, not looking up from his careful steps over and around the terrain. "Much left of the body?"

John's frown deepens, strings drawing taught in his brows. "Yeah. Just the throat torn out."

"So why not more bites taken out? Why leave a kill untouched after taking it down?"

He glances up at Caleb, back down to the ground. "Round missing from his rifle. Fit the witness reports. I figure…" John crouches by the base of a nearby tree, arching limb of a root blocking a wall between his shoulder and the forest beyond. He runs his hand against its textured flank then grimaces, rises to his feet again. "I figure the shot hit target, it was wounded… maybe too much to any more than a kill."

Caleb's gaze is steady on John's face, not shifting for a moment. "So what makes you think this is anything more than a wolf attack--?"

"The kill should be enough. The paw prints were huge, and--"

"_Kill_, John, not _kills_. You're right, if it was shot by this yahoo it would have been pissed enough to defend itself, and would have if it were that fucking _big_; but there was _no feed_ and no other reports in the area?"

John bares his teeth, staring right back at Caleb, unwavering but not stepping closer. "My boys are gone, Caleb," he says, voice sounding soft but feeling sharp at the back of his throat. "And the last time anyone sees 'em it's you, selling my Sammy some silver bullets and hunting knives. My son’s car’s not thirty miles from this very spot. You're suggesting this is _nothing?_"

Caleb drops his gaze, shaking his head as his mouth takes on a bitter twist. He pushes his shoulders away from the tree behind him, standing straight and crossing both arms over his chest. "No," he says, like it's the start of something else, but his pause stretches out til John looks down, turns away.

"There's a track here," John says. "Animal track, leading further in. You coming or not?"

*

_Ran out of food yesterday,_ John writes in the journal, _but the track leads along the stream, so we don't need to worry about drinking water just yet. Makes the packs lighter, hiking easier._

_Caleb snared some brush rabbits. Means we need a fire every night, unless we want to eat them raw._

"What was Sam like?" The question's out almost before John's aware he's even spoken aloud. "When you saw him?"

Caleb strips the last fibers of flesh from the rabbit-bone before tossing it into the fire. He glances at John briefly, eyes dark through the orange flicker of firelight; nothing paler from above, no moon tonight. The question's not a new one, nor is the answer. "Healthy," he says. "If a bit tired. Friendly. Caught me as I just came in from a hunt, wanted to restock on munitions."

"And Dean?"

"Not with him. Resting up from the last job."

"In the East?"

"Yeah." Caleb rubs his hands on the sides of his thighs, wiping away the grease. "Old witch in Virginia, Sam said. Used up all their silver."

"Dean was hurt."

"On the mend, from being thrown against a brick wall. Sam thought concussed. They were headed North next." Caleb stands, arching his shoulders back for a moment, then forward, then slump. He kicks at the loam idly. "I'm gonna piss, man, then sleep."

"Sure."

The forest smells like sap, warm and heady from the summer heat, and damp earth and the musty rot of the loam. The crackle of the fire masks the creak and rustle of insects, the silence as dark and blank outside the space of firelight as the light is. John's chest hurts. It isn't until he lies back against his bedroll that he realises he's been holding his breath.

*

It's late afternoon when they follow a more worn track branching off from alongside the stream; taking slow, powerful steps up the sandy bank.

It's well hidden from the waterside, but this much closer the opening is too big to be overlooked, naturally-occurring as it seems. The bank angles up abruptly, the result of tumbled slabs of stone John can see still pushing up, moss-covered, through the tenacious undergrowth. Trees grow at acute angles to the line of the slope; the massive root of one droops and curls over the mutual lean of two slabs of stone against each other, leaving a gap into the hillside with darkness beyond it. The ground around the opening is dusty, worn; there’s dug-out sand scattered around and leading up to it.

John hauls his pack off, fumbles for the bulky torch that extends a clear column of tough plastic into a lantern. Its light dim and pale in the golden sunlight, he hands it to Caleb and goes back to the pack, drawing out his Glock.

"I didn't know you brought that," Caleb says, sounding almost surprised.

John looks up once he's slotted the clip full of silver into it. "You expect me to come unarmed?" Their voices are hunter-soft, wary, despite the fact they're standing immediately outside the den of their prey.

"Of course not. I mean, that you brought _that_…"

John doesn't reply, holds the gun in both hands, low, muzzle pointed downward and he steps silently forward, squinting into the darkness. Or near-darkness; there're dim textures and shapes within that dark space. He looks to Caleb, tilts his head a little; Caleb holds up the lamp as John ducks, twisting his body through the stone-and-wood gap, blinking rapidly to try and adjust his eyes even as Caleb steps in, lamp aloft, behind him.

It's empty. Or not empty; but they're alone. The walls of the den are smooth rock and root-threaded hard-packed earth, some natural, some dug-out; a big enough space for both John and Caleb to stand comfortably, if a little hunched. It doesn't smell stale, but not as fresh as the air stirred up by running water; a little of meat (there, dried strips of threaded up in a far, acute corner), of sap, of dry earth. Sweat. The light is cool, lantern illuminating more harshly the pockets of shadow that are left uncovered by the gentle light seeping in from cracks amidst inter-woven rock and tree-root in places on the ceiling. There's a softer mass in deeper shade, John steps cautiously toward it and Caleb follows with the lantern, drops it lower as John nudges at it with the tip of his boot. A deer pelt, and not filthy but long-since faded cloths, blankets.

"John," Caleb's voice is low and close in the muffled, quiet space, almost startling. John glances up, unable to unclench his jaw, relax his wide eyes. Caleb lifts the lantern again, makes his way to the gash of daylight, and John has no choice but to follow.

*

They cross the stream again, make their way back downwind of the den until they find a clearing flat enough to camp down on, stopping by unspoken agreement. Not that downwind'll matter much; it'd probably scented them miles back. This far away, though, it might not take them as a threat. Yet.

"The full moon's in two days," Caleb says, kicking aside detritus to leave a sandy patch of earth to dig a shallow fire pit in. "If we leave first light we'll have enough time to get out of its territory."

John doesn't speak, not sure he can articulate a response. After a few moments, Caleb lifts his head to find John staring at him. "John--"

"Not sure what the hell you think we came here for," he grates. "But I'm not leaving 'til it's finished."

"There's nothing _to_ finish, John," Caleb grits his teeth, shakes his head. "Whatever-- _whoever_ we've found here… It's not what you're looking for."

"You're telling me we're a handful of yards downwind from a fucking _werewolf_ den with a clip full of silver bullets and you want to _walk away?_"

Caleb doesn't back down at John's seething, sharp-edged tone. "Look at where we are, John. You think this thing's out hunting and killing innocent people every month? Hell, it's probably got more rights as far as fitting in the food chain goes than we do right now."

"It's killed. It--"

"In _self defense_, John, you said it yourself. Which is more'n I can say for that idiot who shot at it in the first place."

"I need--" John begins, then grits his teeth closed, grinds them til it hurts. "I'm not leaving until I find them."

Caleb's voice is softer now, to match the sad half-smile that flickers in the minute curve of his lip. "I hate to admit it as much as you, buddy, but I don't think you're gonna find 'em here."

"I'm not leaving."

Caleb heaves an exasperated sigh, shakes his head, stares at the half-built fire. "I am," he says.

*

Caleb leaves at first light. He takes the GPS with him but John's been keeping track of himself on paper maps for decades, just scribbles down the finite coordinates of his location in the journal before Caleb grips his hand in a fierce handshake then turns heel.

Being able to find your way out of somewhere doesn't seem to matter when you've been lost in it for longer than you can remember.

In the heavy heat of day he plots a wide circumference around the den; finding the well-worn paths and smooth-rubbed branches where a furred body's slipped under or through. He marks his passage with a crude-carved **W** on every fourth tree, understanding that to lose his way now would undoubtedly be fatal.

There's no sign of the thing whose den he's staking out, but that's not entirely unexpected. A distant part of John's gratified that it thinks him threat enough to avoid when in its more vulnerable human form, at least.

He makes it back to his camp well before dusk, enough time left to sketch roughly into a blank page of the journal a hollow circle for the den, sinuous paths leading from it, and where his campsite sits amongst them. Then it's abruptly too dark to see the page clearly enough; the sun drops and the forest hushes around him.

The moon; fat and gluttonous on the bloodied horizon, blurring the outlines of the trees, melting their silhouettes to present itself whole to John. He holds his breath, strains for sound, for scent even; but there's nothing but silence, from the direction of the den or otherwise.

Then there's sound. A low, tongue-curled hiss at first, gradually increasing in volume and proximity, like the _shush_ of rain on a tin roof, intensity building as if from shower to deluge and then he realizes what it is just before it's upon him; a great wind traversing miles of forest, rushing through the trees. They bend and creak above him and there's a flurry of darker shapes against the fading sky as a clan of birds scatter to merge into the shadows of other branches. The sound recedes and he can hear the forest _breathe_, hear the residual rubbing of leaf against leaf and frenetic scuttling of squirrels descending to the undergrowth; a lone owl hoots upstream and the sound bounces down along the water.

The click of a gun being armed is loud and sharp in the softer overlapping of night-sounds. John lets his breath out slow and quiet, slides the journal into his pack, and stands.

The full moon's a catch-22, bright enough that he wouldn't be able to see well enough to hunt otherwise. He moves stealthily through the underbrush he's learned in the day time, picking his way strategically between tracks, angling around and out and crossing back-forth and covering as much ground with as little sound as possible until--

There. The crashing of something heavy coming through the undergrowth, slicing like a hot knife through John's hyper-tuned-in awareness of the night sounds, and he pinpoints it, shifts from where he's crouching, presses his back against an upraised tree root. The sound gets louder, something _really_ heavy, pounding reverb against the earth below and John grips the Glock, heart pounding, and turns--

And dives aside, involuntary shout torn from his throat as the stag crashes on through the place John stood a moment before. He pants, watching with wide eyes as it continues to canter onwards, huge antlers shuddering stiffly against the more elegantly swaying branches as it tosses its head. John swears softly, brings a hand up to touch his face cautiously; feeling a hot stripe on his cheek where a branch had whipped back at him from the stag's thunderous passage.

The sound of its movement has almost been superceded by the sound of John's breathing before he recovers enough to remember, to curse himself, surge upright again and stumble through the brush after it, with only marginally more care. His heart pounds loud in his ears, _bang-bang-bang_ like the slap of a flat palm against the loose skin of a drum, and his throat burns. The Glock is cold metal in his sweaty palm, and it's not far enough from day's heat yet that he's not sweating heavily at the first surge of exertion.

The snap-swish-break sounds of the stag ahead of him cease suddenly, and John slows in response, stepping more carefully, more quietly. There's the solid sound of the stag striking its hoof against the ground in warning, and John hears it move again; sounds shifting, turning aside to the South.

A howl threads itself up through the trembling branches of the redwoods, coming from somewhere in front of John, far in front of the stag, and his heart lurches and stutters and batters itself against the inside of his chest and then there's another.

Another howl. From behind him.

_Shit. **Shit.**_

_ **Two.** _

The Glock feels suddenly electrified in his hand, slippery and burning bright against his palm, his fingers, knuckles locked in a rigor that matches the tightening of his throat.

South. The stag -- the prey -- went South. John turns North.

*

The map's at the campsite, and John's memory of it is all a swirling mess of contour lines; nothing he can pin down enough to apply to the current curve of land around him. The thirst, first making itself known after he'd come to an exhausted halt before dawn, rises again with the sun and the heat; he makes the logical decision to head downward, toward where the stream ought to be, but when he gets to the base of the small valley he finds it a lush but otherwise dry groove.

So maybe he ended up on the _other_ side of that particular incline. He remembers running, stumbling, heaving himself up and careening downward; it's entirely possible that he's made his way up and over and needs to head back in the opposite direction.

It's entirely probable that he's lost.

It takes more than a couple of hours to re-ascend the slope and pick his way through the undergrowth down the other side, and it's almost identical to the other. John stops, sits. This is as good a place to rest as any.

When he wakes the sun's a little gentler; he's slept through the hottest part of the day between the limbs of a redwood's roots. The thirst isn't so bad now that he's not breathing so hard; just slow and steady through his nose, rhythm a gentle remnant of sleep.

North. He'd headed North away from the stag, and the stream the den was near ran East to West, into the ocean. If he headed South he should get to the stream. It would be easy to follow it from there.

Easy if the trees were planted and groomed into a grid that meant he'd run straight last night, not weaved and dodged and leaned this way or that to pick the easiest path. He might reach ocean before he reaches the campsite.

John starts walking.

*

He slows as the sun starts to set, clawing ache in his head abating a little as the light thickens the air to a soft glow. Then the moon rises, shifting the colour of the forest from gold and bronze to a cooler silver, tracing finite details even as it saturates the shadows into an inky black.

The glow in the West serves as anchor point for his mental compass, but then the sky's full dark and the moon directly above, drowning out the pinprick grid of stars and when John looks up it leaves him dizzy, disoriented.

His mind is thick, blank; soft and dark and suffocating like the layer of earth below the surface of decaying detritus at his feet. _Tired_. His fingers flex involuntarily, automatic reach for the pen that isn't there. _I'm just so tired._

There's a sound like a flipped switch and his lethargy crystallizes instantly into alert tension. His body thrums, every muscle held still and straining for sound -- again, the shuffle of leaves, the creaking of wooden fibers in a snapped twig. Too measured, too careful to be squirrel or deer. He listens for breath, for howl or growl, and his mind rushes. _Downwind_; words scrolling out across the lit page of his mind now, black ballpoint. _I'm downwind_.

The muzzle of the Glock digs into the sweaty hollow of his lower back, nudging as he stands slowly, slowly. There's a minute shuffle of sound again, slightly more distant, and he begins to move. Barely breathing, the pounding of his heart somehow not louder than the whisper of his body against the surface of the forest.

Faster. Eyes straining to assess the ground ahead even as it smears and blurs with his movement, too dark this far below the canopy with the moon tilting, kite-string tying it to earth dragging on its axis. A howl at his back, far back; freezing him almost mid-stride, eyes wide like that'll help him to hear clearer. Another rising to meet it; two notes in unheimlich harmony, two strands of rope woven tight together, rough against John's throat, tightening. He turns his body before he's turned back his head and the ground falls away in front of him, knees lock then buckle and bash against tree roots and he skids and slides, attempting to brake the downward momentum with the heels of his palms.

When he comes to a halt it takes a moment for the surge of adrenaline to back down again, sensory details seeping back into his awareness. Cold. Something cold, on his thigh. _Under_ him.

Water. He forces his breathing to slow, hears the soft, melodic whisper of running water, feels the damp grass beneath his bracing hands, turns and leans, looks down to see the stream like a ribbon of silver and onyx, ripples reflecting moonlight and casting shadows of their own.

The final slope of the bank is more acute, eaten at by the stream, and he edges carefully down from the lip of earth that'd stopped his momentum, then kneels in the shallow water, back curved forward, bringing double-handfuls of cold liquid up to his mouth and face.

The stream will mask his scent, break his trail. He lies back in it for a moment, skin flinching only momentarily as his upper body is immersed, arms rising to float a little alongside his chest, eyes closed as he pushes his head back and under.

_Slowly. Drink slowly._ The cold water hits his stomach like an expanding icy fist, and he stills, waiting for his head to calm its spinning before rising again, almost knee-deep, to wade with as little splashing as possible upstream.

*

Morning, and the dehydration headache that'd held his temples in a vise is gone, leaving only the hollowed-out emptiness of his belly on a couple day's worth of inept foraging. He wasn't made to survive more'n two days without red meat, something he'd raised the boys on as well, good for building strength.

_Boys_.

He dozes on the bank in the early light, sun drying his clothes and shining warm pink through his eyelids, and when he wakes it's slow enough that he's able to wind the tattered streams of his half-dreams around his fingers, curl them into a soft fist. Sammy, all of two with his legs still bending and locking jerkily when he walked like he wasn't sure if there was going to be any ground to support the next step, mouth open in still-new awe at being upright. Dean with crayon wax under his fingernails, eyes still looking vulnerable and surprised with the exposure from his newly-cropped hair. Two still bodies taking up less than half of the back seat, rocked only by the movement of the car, framed in the rearview and the headlights eating up the road ahead of him.

He pisses into the stream, the easing of the drum-tight pressure in his bladder relief enough to ignore the bone-itching hunger at least momentarily. The sun rises upstream; he's on the North side.

It takes a moment for John's eyes to adjust to the cool green under the deeper canopy, so he doesn't notice it at first. Or doesn't _recognise_ it, not until he's closer. His fingers skate across the dry bark and stutter in the fresh sap at eye-level; the cuts in the redwood trunk aren't more than an hour or two old. Long enough to bleed a little, not long enough to crystallize.

A deep-carved **W**.

The two downward points he can rest the tips of his fingers in, the pale underskin of the tree smooth and cool, if a little tacky, when he strokes slowly up, fingers spreading wider. The edges weep translucent red; thicker between the pad of his thumb and forefingers than tears, thicker than blood. It stiffens even as he holds his hand up to his nose, the smell a sharper, headier fume to the ambient scent of the sun-soaked forest around him. The bark is rough, sun-warm against his other palm, solid and unyielding against his breastbone.

There's another within eyesight, four-or-so trees along, not far from the bank, upstream. **W** deep and strong, wide as the span between thumb and pinky on his outstretched hand. Then another.

He doesn't think, just walks, slow and steady like the pounding of his heart on the gentle incline, following the curves and kinks of the stream until they straighten again. Then there's a trail, bending abruptly from forest to water's edge before dipping in and he has to blink harder this time before his eyes re-adjust in the dimmer light, and there's another **W**, in his own more compact hand, tree-flesh darker than the more recent flashes of exposed white behind him.

There's a cooler bag in his pack with overcooked rabbit meat, and he drops to his knees when he gets to the campsite, scrabbles for it, hoping against hope that a few days lying in the sun hasn't spoiled it. The rabbit meat's not there. The meat that is is drier, darker, smells strongly of smoke and the fibers of it tear audibly when he rips at it with his teeth.

The light's different when he goes into the den this time, gold columns of spinning motes and delicate hairs spanning from the gaps above to the dusty ground. He doesn't need the torch to see that it's truly empty this time, dirt hard-packed and well-worn underfoot but no more than that; no blankets, nothing.

Except…

On the far side of it, visible in the cast of light through the entrance when John shifts aside to let it stream in. On the ground there, not dropped or discarded but carefully placed.

The leather is smoother than he remembers, a little darker, a little more stained when he sees it in the sunlight. It soon warms in his palm, and when he closes his eyes it's almost like it's not even there, or just another part of him that he doesn't notice any more than he does his own hand.

Some of the early pages are missing, or not missing; re-used toward the back, papers once pasted in turned over, blank spaces covered in writing. Pages of it. Blue ballpoint fading out gradually. The last few pages sparser than the ones before it, fewer words, bigger spaces. Fainter text; as if written in pencil. _Not pencil_, John realises when he brushes his fingers over it and the letters come off against his fingers, leaving only faint grooves in the paper.

_Maybe November,_ the final page with writing says, only just legible, the leather sleeve facing it smudged black.

_S was 6 mths old when M died. When J died -- 22 + 6 mths. _

_Now -- still only 23. 23 + 4 mths in the last Sept. 23 + 4 mths now._

_No more Novembers. _

_Never thought something could just… stop mattering. Guess it can’t til it does._

The last line isn't pressed in any harder than the ones above it, scrawled in immediately beneath: _I'm sorry Dad_.

*

When he pulls out the collapsible camp shovel he discovers that the vinyl-covered journal's missing from his pack, and the black ballpoint that he'd kept in the front zippered pocket. The leather-bound journal he slides carefully in its place, then starts digging. The Glock's waterlogged, useless, nothing he can clean it with here so he has to slide the clip out instead of firing it into the hole he's dug. The forest doesn't quiet around him as he thumbs the bullets one-by-one into the raw earth and that almost seems more fitting than arresting the gentle rhythms lapping in on all sides with gunfire.

He covers the pale gleam of silver with dark earth, and the sunlight breathes golden around him.

_Guess it can’t til it does._

Re-cycling, through and through again, ’til he finds a pen to write it with.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/43595.html


End file.
